Rainbow
by scarlet-fever666
Summary: Life plodded on. Slowly, achingly, it left without him, as he stared at the framed photo on his desk. Denny/Maria oneshot. Some spoilers particularly chaps 34/35, 89, and 98.


He'd lost a part of himself when she'd been killed.

He had screamed, kicked, lashed, when Riza had sat him down and tried to explain. When he refused to believe her and caught a glimpse of the national news. Nobody could approach him without a stream of verbal abuse thrown at them. Nobody had ever seen him so angry. His calm demeanor had been destroyed in a flash, in a click of two fingers.

It had taken a man with the strength of five to hold him off when the colonel had walked in the office. If he had looked, if the haze had lifted, he would have seen the glitter in the eyes, the invisible strings tugging his mouth towards the floor. But his reasoning had burnt with her.

He took his leave, the leave he was supposed to have spent with her – he couldn't say her name anymore – their time in the mountains. He was going to introduce her to his little brother; his sister was going to teach her how to catch tiddlers with sticks and a net made of their mother's old stockings. Instead, he shut himself in his room, refusing to leave, even when his brothers and sisters threatened to break the door down if he didn't eat something.

He threw clothes and ornaments. They didn't mend him. They simply broke too.

He nearly threw the little glass dog she'd given him as a birthday present out of the window onto his stupid head the day Mustang turned up at the house to talk to him. Instead he threw the much heavier, uglier clock his youngest sister had bestowed upon him as a joke last Christmas. Mustang didn't come around so much after that.

The only person he ever let in his sanctuary was Gracia, on blazingly hot summer days. She brought him pink lemonade, listened to him wail, held him close as he sobbed in her arms. She understood. She didn't know, but she understood, and that's what he had needed.

She persuaded him to get out of the room whilst she cleaned, to go play with his siblings who wanted their big cool brother back, even if he sometimes got boring when they were trussing him up as their captive, as they hollered and shouted and a single tear rolled down his cheek, messing up their carefully drawn tribal markings made of highlighter stolen from dull offices. She drank tea with his parents as the family wept, helped him with his small day to day decisions, even dry cleaned his military uniform for his first day back.

He was grateful for Central's decision to move him further away from Mustang's office; facing that murderer every day was "detrimental" to the military, and "detrimental" to Mustang's health.

Life plodded on. Slowly, achingly, it left without him, as he stared at the framed photo on his desk.

Riza visited sometimes, leaving coffee on his desk, a chocolate with the paperwork here, a glass ornament there. She had always liked feeding him when they thought nobody was watching, finding rainbows in the cheap souvenirs from the market.

Havoc warned him not to lose himself, that there was always hope. But Havoc didn't know anything.

Then the revolution came.

He had nowhere to be, so he stayed at home. Home tore him apart, so he went to the market.

The radio was on, but he wasn't listening. He knew what was happening, and he had refused to take part. Life wasn't worth living.

And then she spoke to him.

He had always believed in ghosts; his eldest brother once had him hiding under his bed for a week because his pillow was apparently haunted. She was speaking to him, letting him know she still cared, she worried for him and their friends. He wished he could have told her everything before she had left him, before she had been snatched away.

Nobody noticed the man crying in the middle of the market. They were all listening intently to the radio.

A small boy tugged on his arm, asked why he was crying. He smiled through the tears, explained that the beautiful woman he had once loved was letting him know she still cared too. The boy looked quizzically at him. She was saying no such thing, he pouted, but she did have a pretty voice.

He realised she wasn't talking to only him.

He ran through the market, knocking people aside, throwing himself away from them to get to her faster, shouting her name as he pelted through the street.

He tried to get through the barricade, screaming, until his voice was hoarse. Still he shouted, until he was let in, hands on head.

They all looked so uptight in the uniforms of the military. He felt terribly underdressed. He felt stupid for thinking he felt terribly underdressed.

He looked around, hoping he didn't look too foolish, eyes brushing over Breda, Maria, Fuery –

He saw her.

He noticed her, drank her in, and his eyes danced over her slender arms, her new muscles he had yet to discover, her steely gaze, her slight tan. Her delicate mole that he had once kissed when drunk. Her delicate lips he had kissed so often when sober.

His eyes couldn't cope, and overflowed.

She made the face she had always made, when he had done something particularly foolish. When he was convinced he heard ghosts moaning amongst the books in Central library, and instead found a very embarrassed young alchemist and librarian. When they had argued for an hour over a spelling mistake on some paperwork. When he had tripped up and knocked over a very expensive vase on their first date. When he told her he loved her for the first time, but that time didn't count, because it had broken into a smile and a response.

The military flanking him let go, and he sped straight to her side, pulled her into his arms, and held on so tight she had to push slightly to breathe.

She took his hands in hers, and the face she had been making had melted away, completing him at last.


End file.
